This work assembles some of the finest scholars who have
contributed to study and examination of the impact of the exile in
biblical literature. Past, present, and future scholars examining the
6th century B.C.E. through historical and archeological (including
paleoclimatology), literary, and the social sciences have been
assembled. Approximately twelve papers from among the twenty papers
presented over the four sessions (parallel to a sizable conference on
the exile) will be represented in this volume.

The first book-length treatment of the most important, and controversial, inscription found in Israel in recent years. The
inscription contains a
possible mention of the name
"David" and is thought by many scholars to verify the existence of this
king. It contains a full account of the discovery, epigraphic analysis,
palaeographical analysis, possible arrangement of the three fragments
discovered, textual analysis and historical commentary. It is more
thorough in each of these treatments than any preceding discussion, and
reviews all of the major theories about the inscription, with a
well-considered
conclusion.

The long-held view that the Persian period in Israel (known as Yehud)
was a historically derivative era that engendered little theological or
literary innovation has been replaced in recent decades by an
appreciation for the importance of the Persian period for understanding
Israels literature, religion, and sense of identity. A new image of
Yehud is emerging that has shifted the focus from viewing the
postexilic period as a staging ground for early Judaism or Christianity
to dealing with Yehud on its own terms, as a Persian colony with a
diverse population. Taken together, the thirteen chapters in this
volume represent a range of studies that touch on a variety of textual
and historical problems to advance the conversation about the
significance of the Persian period and especially its formative
influence on biblical literature. Contributors include Richard Bautch,
Jon L. Berquist, Zipporah G. Glass, Alice W. Hunt, David Janzen, John
Kessler, Melody D. Knowles, Jennifer L. Koosed, Herbert R. Marbury,
Christine Mitchell, Julia M. OBrien, Donald C. Polaski, Jean-Pierre
Ruiz, Brent A. Strawn, and Christine Roy Yoder.
Reviews: Armin Siedlecki, RBL, 7/12/2008; Ernst Axel Knauf,
RBL, 8/30/2008; Stephen L. Cook,
CBQ Vol. 71, n. 3, July 2009, p. 668-670.

Norman Gottwald's monumental The Tribes of Yahweh
caused an immediate sensation when first published in 1979, and its
influence has continued to be felt, both in the area of biblical
politics and in the application of sociological methods to the Hebrew
Bible. This book, following the reprint, with a new preface, by
Sheffield Academic
Press [1999], reflects on the impact and the implications of the work
after twenty years. The distinguished contributors are David Jobling,
Frank Frick, Charles Carter, Carol Meyers, Jacques Berlinerblau,
Itumeleng Mosala, Gerald West, Roland Boer and, in a response to
contributors as well as an interview with the editor, Norman Gottwald
himself.

Marking the 60th birthday of Professor Philip R.
Davies,
Dr. Duncan Burns and John W. Rogerson, his former student and
colleague, respectively, aim to do him justice.
They have comprised articles from their peers to reflect on the impact
Professor Davies has made in three particular areas of study: Hebrew
Bible, Qumran, and Paleastinian Archaeology; New Testament and Early
Judaism; and Biblical Interpretation. The breadth of this volume aims
to reflect the scope, interest, and influence of Professor Davies from
the last 30 years.

This volume is a reprint of the 1987 edition
with a new preface by Robert B. Coote and Keith W. Whitelam setting the
work in the context of recent debates on the history of ancient Israel.
The book provides a broad overview of settlement patterns and social
relations throughout Palestinian history from the middle of the third
millennium BCE to the present day in order to illustrate how the
emergence of Israel in the early Iron Age fits into the march of time.
Archaeological evidence for the appearance of dispersed settlements in
the highlands and steppes of Palestine at the beginning of the early
Iron Age followed by the rapid centralization of this area suggests
that Israel emerged within Palestine in response to the decline in east
Mediterranean trade at the end of the Late Bronze Age. The development
of an Israelite monarchy is seen as being inextricably linked to the
factors involved in Israel's emergence - as distinct from much previous
research which has presented the monarchy as alien to the origins of
Israel.

This is a book about
history,
though it is not another ‘History of Israel’. P. R. Davies focuses on biblical scholarship to ask why
it has been taken for granted that ‘ancient Israel’ is an accessible
historical entity, and to examine some of the hermeneutical practices of
biblical historians which arise from, and subsequently protect, this assumption.
‘Ancient Israel’ is a scholarly construct, the result
of taking a literary construct, the biblical narrative, and making it the object
of historical investigation. This scholarly construct is
contradictory,
imaginative and ideologic.

Lester
Grabbe is probably the most distinguished, and certainly the most
prolific of historians of ancient Judaism, the author of several
standard treatments and the founder of the European Seminar on Historical
Methodology. He has continued to set the bar for Hebrew Bible scholarship.
In this collection
some thirty of his distinguished colleagues and friends offer their
reflections on the practice and theory of history writing, on the
current controversies and topics of major interest. This collection
provides an opportunity for scholars of high caliber to consider
groundbreaking ideas in light of Grabbe's scholarship and influence.
This festschrift offers the reader a unique volume of essays to explore
and consider the far-reaching influence of Grabbe on the field of
Biblical studies as a whole.

The SBL signed a contract with Kohlhammer Verlag to publish
English translations of all the volumes in Kohlhammer's Biblische
Enzyklopädie series. The SBL has already translated Rainer Albertz, Israel in Exile: The History and Literature of the Sixth Century
B.C.E., 2003; Walter Dietrich, The Early Monarchy in Israel: The Tenth Century
B.C.E., 2007; Volkmar Fritz, The Emergence of Israel in the Twelfth and Eleventh Centuries B.C.E., 2011, and Erhard S. Gerstenberger, Israel in the Persian Period: The Fifth and Fourth Centuries B.C.E.,
2011 [Obs.: estes volumes estão disponíveis
para download para o Brasil e outros países contemplados pelo
projeto ICI
da SBL].

Two leading scholars, an archaeologist and a historian,
combine an exhilarating tour of the field of biblical archaeology with a
fascinating explanation of how and why the Bible's historical saga
differs so dramatically from the archaeological finds. They explain what
the Bible says about ancient Israel and show how it diverges sharply from
archaeological reality. They then offer a dramatic new version of the
history of ancient Israel, bringing archaeological evidence to bear on the
question of when, where, and why the Bible was first written.

In David and Solomon,
Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, leading archaeologists and
authors who have done a great deal to uncover and understand the
breathtaking findings of their field, focus on the first two great
kings of the Bible as a lens through which we can see the evolution of
the entire biblical era. David and Solomon offers a guide to a thousand years of
ancient civilization and the evolution of a tradition of kingly
leadership that held sway throughout the West for much of our history.

The Old
Testament, and biblical scholarship itself, distinguishes between
mythical and historical. This book argues that only historical thing in
the Bible is the Bible itself, a superb product of Jewish thought. What
is narrated in the Bible is only myth. But this myth about Israel's
past was still built with fragments of history, or rather with written
traditions that were different from those expressed in the actual text,
and obviously more ancient. These essays follow in the spirit of his
controversial
History and Ideology in Ancient Israel,
which combine detailed philological reseaerch, a wide knowledge of
ancient Near Eastern literature and Biblical Archaeology
- and a radical way of understanding what the biblical text is really
telling us.
This is an erudite and thought-provoking book, which should not be
ignored by anyone who finds the origin of the Bible a fascinating and
still largely unknown phenomenon.

This book was published in 1997, as the result of the
1st European Seminar on Historical Methodology, a meeting holds by selected
scholars in Dublin in July 1996. All papers addressed in some fashion or other
the two following questions: Can a ‘History of Israel’ be written and if so,
how? What place does the text of the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible have in the
matter?

This book was published in 1998, as the result of the Second
European Seminar on Historical Methodology, a meeting holds by
selected scholars in Lausanne in July 1997. Was there an 'Exile'? And if
so, how did it fit into the pattern of population deportations that
characterized the imperial strategies of the ancient Near East? In a
methodological discussion of this issue, the contributors cover a range of
topics, from ancient politics to modern ideology. In probing the meaning
and implication of 'Exile' they also reflect a spectrum of opinions
and conclusions.

Is the Bible a Hellenistic book? The essays in this
volume respond to that challenging question, formulated by Niels Peter
Lemche, and offer everything from qualified agreement to vociferous
opposition. In so doing, they debate and illuminate the many features of
Jewish writing in the Second Temple period, including not only the
scriptures themselves and their own history, but the non-canonized
literature of the late Second-Temple period.

According
to the Bible, among the last kings of the kingdom of Judah was one of
the most notorious kings- Manasseh -and one of the most righteous -
Josiah. Are the accounts of their contrasting reigns anything more than
the ideological creations of pious writers and editors? Does this
juxtaposition of a 'good king' and a 'bad king' provide good historical
information or only theological wishful thinking? In this volume the
on-going discussions in the European Seminar on Methodology in Israel's History
have tackled the history of Judah in the seventh century BCE, with a
focus on the reign of Josiah. Some essays survey the history and
archaeology of Judah from Sennacherib to Nebuchadnezzar. Several
examine the reign of Manasseh and address the question of whether it is
ripe for re-evaluation. Others ask what we know of the reign of Josiah
and, especially, what form his famous cult reform took or even whether
it was historical. As always, the editor gives an introduction to the
topic, with summaries of the contributions, plus a concluding summary
of and personal perspective on the discussion. Contributors include
such internationally known scholars as Rainer Albertz, Philip Davies,
Axel Knauf, Nadav Na'aman, Marvin Sweeney, and Christoph Uehlinger. Reviews by John Engle and Eckart
Otto: Review
of Biblical Literature(April 4, 2006).

In the first of four volumes on
A History of the Jews and Judaism in the Second Temple Period, Lester Grabbe presents a comprehensive history of
Yehud
- the Aramaic name for Judah - during the Persian Period. Among the
many crucial questions he addresses are: What are the sources for this
period and how do we evaluate them? And how do we make them 'speak' to
us through the fog of centuries? This first volume, Yehud: A History of the Persian Province of Judah
offers the most up to date and comprehensive examination of the
political and administrative structures; the society and economy; the
religion, temple and cult; the developments in thought and literature;
and the major political events of Judah at the time.

This is the second volume of the projected four-volume
history of the Second Temple period. This volume brings together all we
know about the Jews during the period from Alexander's conquest to the
eve of the Maccabaean revolt, including the Jews in Egypt as well as
the situation in Judah. Based directly on the primary sources, which
are surveyed, the study addresses questions such as administration,
society, religion, economy, jurisprudence, Hellenism and Jewish
identity. These are discussed in the context of the wider Hellenistic
world and its history. A strength of the study is its extensive
up-to-date secondary bibliography, approximately one thousand items.

In this volume the European Seminar on Historical Methodology
uses the period of the 9th and 8th centuries as a field for
investigating the question of writing a history of Israel. This period
provides a striking example in which the biblical text can be compared
with other written and arti-factual sources. Contributors explore a
variety of aspects of the history of the period of Omri and Ahab and
the following Jehu dynasty. As a volume it provides a comprehensive
picture of the sources, the historical problems, and the areas of major
debate. Participants discuss such topics as the dating of prophetic
texts, the house of Ahab in Chronicles, the Tel Dan inscription, the
Mesha inscription, the Jezebel tradition, the archaeology of Iron IIB,
the relationship between the biblical text and contemporary sources,
and the nature of the Omride state. An introductory chapter summarizes
the individual papers and also the relevant section of Mario Liverani’s
recent history of the period. A concluding `Reflections on the Debate’
summarizes the issues raised in the papers and provides a perspective
on the discussion.

A
number of 'histories of Israel' have been written over the past few
decades yet the basic methodological questions are not always
addressed: how do we write such a history and how can we know anything
about the history of Israel? The purpose of this study is to provide a
collection and analysis of the materials necessary for writing such a
history.

The Context of Scripture illuminatingly
presents the multi-faceted world of ancient writing that forms the
colorful background to the literature of the Hebrew Bible. Designed as
a thorough and durable reference work for all engaged in the study of
the Bible and the ancient Near East, and involving approximately 90 of
the world's outstanding scholars in the field, it provides reliable
access to a broad, balanced and representative collection of Ancient
Near Eastern texts that have some bearing on the interpretation of the
Bible. Translations of recently discovered texts are included,
alongside new translations of better-known texts and in some cases the
best existing translations of such texts. The substantial three-volume
work, with its specially designed page layout and large format,
features full cross-referencing to comparable Bible passages, and new,
up-to-date bibliographical annotations with judicious commentary. Its
many distinct advantages over other collections will ensure the place
of
The Context of Scripture as a standard reference work for the 21st
century.

Because Ancient Israel means so much to us and because we actually know so little for sure,
this dictionary is particularly important. It examines the usual sources in the Old Testament and
surveys the findings of more recent archaeological research to help us determine just what
happened and when, a far from simple task. It includes entries on most of the persons, places,
and events which are generally considered, and shows more broadly what the Kingdoms of
Israel and Judah were like and what role they played in the ancient world, but it also defines
them as closely as possible according to the latest data. While the results may differ from
traditional views, they are essential correctives.

Niels Peter Lemche focuses on the way Israelites understood themselves at
different points in history--before, within, and after the monarchy. He
discusses references to the people and their leaders in other ancient Near
Eastern texts and examines the Israelites' self-understanding and behavior as a
distinct people through their history.

This
volume is the outcome of an international conference held at Tel Aviv
University, May 29-31, 2001. The idea for the conference germinated at
the fifth Transeuphratene colloquy in Paris in March 2000. The
Tel Aviv conference was organized in order to encourage investigation
into the obscure five or six decades preceding the Persian conquests in
the latter part of the 6th century. The essays here are organized in 5
parts: (1) The Myth of the Empty Land Revisited; (2) Cult, Priesthood,
and Temple; (3) Military and Governmental Aspects; (4) Archaeological
Perspectives on the 6th Century B.C.E.; and (5) Exiles and Foreigners
in Egypt and Babylonia. Contributors: H. M. Barstad, B. Oded, L. S.
Fried, S. Japhet, J. Blenkinsopp, G. N. Knoppers, Y. Amit, D. Edelman,
Y. Hoffman, R. H. Sack, D. Vanderhooft, J. W. Betlyon, A. Lemaire, C.
E. Carter, O. Lipschits, A. Zertal, J. R. Zorn, B. Porten, and R.
Zadok. Review by Bob Becking, published 6/6/2004, and by John Kessler, RBL, published
5/22/2004. Review by John C. Endres: CBQ 67, n. 1, January 2005, p. 177-179.

In
July 2003, a conference was held at the University of Heidelberg,
Germany, focusing on the people and land of Judah during the 5th and
early 4th centuries B.C.E.— the period when the Persian Empire held
sway over the entire ancient Near East. This volume publishes the
papers of the participants in the working group that attended the
Heidelberg conference. Participants whose contributions appear here
include: Y. Amit, B. Becking, J. Berquist, J. Blenkinsopp, M.
Dandamayev, D. Edelman, T. Eskenazi, A. Fantalkin and O. Tal, L. Fried,
L. Grabbe, S. Japhet, J. Kessler, E. A. Knauf, G. Knoppers, R. Kratz,
A. Lemaire, O. Lipschits, H. Liss, M. Oeming, L. Pearce, F. Polak, B.
Porten and A. Yardeni, E. Stern, D. Ussishkin, D. Vanderhooft, and J.
Wright. The conference was the second of three meetings;
the first, held at Tel Aviv in May 2001, was published as
Judah and the Judeans in the Neo-Babylonian Period by Eisenbrauns in 2003.
A third
conference focusing on Judah and the Judeans in the Hellenistic era was
held in the summer of 2005, at Münster, Germany, and published by
Eisenbrauns as Judah and the Judeans in the Fourth Century B.C.E.
in 2007. Review by Erhard Gerstenberger, RBL, published 10/15/2006. Review by Richard J. Bautch: CBQ 69, n. 3, July 2007, p. 621-624.

During the past decade, the period from the 7th
century B.C.E. and later has been a major focus because it is thought
to be the era when much of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament was formed.
As a result, there has also been much interest in the historical
developments of that time and specifically in the status of Judah and
its neighbors.
Three conferences dealing roughly with a century each were organized, and
the first conference was held in Tel Aviv in 2001; the proceedings of that conference were published as
Judah and the Judeans in the Neo-Babylonian Period.
The second volume was published in early 2006, a report on the conference held in Heidelberg in July 2003:
Judah and the Judeans in the Persian Period.
Judah and the Judeans in the Fourth Century B.C.E. is the publication of the proceedings of
the third of these conferences,
which was held in
Münster, Germany, in August 2005; the essays in it focus on the century
during which the Persian Empire fell to Alexander the Great and the
Hellenistic kingdoms came to the fore. Participants whose contributions
are published here are: R. Achenbach, R. Albertz, B. Becking, E. Ben
Zvi, J. Blenkinsopp, E. Eshel, H. Eshel, L. L. Grabbe, A. Kloner, G. N.
Knoppers, I. Kottsieper, A. Lemaire, O. Lipschits, Y. Magen, K. Schmid,
I. Stern., O. Tal, D. Vanderhooft, J. Wiesehöfer,
and J. W. Wright. Reviewed by Allen Kerkeslager,Saint Joseph’s
University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,
RBL, published 3/28/2009.

This collection assembles 32 articles from 1963 to 1999,
reflecting a wide range of perspectives on the controverted topic of Israelite
history writing. The volume will prove useful for courses or seminars on
historiography, Old Testament/Hebrew Bible historiography and historical studies,
and as a resource for those interested in the current state of the question.

Philosophy and Practice in Writing a History of
Ancient Israel elucidates and examines assumptions about history
writing that current historians of ancient Israel and Judah employ. It
is undertaken in the context of the conflict between so-called
“minimalists” and “maximalists” within the discipline today. Though the
use of the Bible as evidence is the focal point of the opposition of
these two approaches, Megan Moore shows that a number of related
philosophical and practical concerns are telescoped in this issue,
including concepts of Empiricism, Objectivity, Representation and
Language, Subject, Explanation, Truth, and Evidence Evaluation and Use.
Organized around these topics, Philosophy and Practice aims to situate
the study of ancient Israel and Judah in the broader intellectual
context of academic history in general and to provide insight into the
formative assumptions of the current debate. This dissertation, written
under the supervision of John Hayes from Emory University, Atlanta,
Georgia, is a serious contribution to the debate on how, and whether at
all, to write a history of ancient Israel.
Review by Ernst Axel
Knauf, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland, RBL, published 9/1/2007.

Although
scholars have for centuries primarily been interested in using the
study of ancient Israel to explain, illuminate, and clarify the
biblical story, Megan Bishop Moore and Brad E. Kelle describe how
scholars today seek more and more to tell the story of the past on its
own terms, drawing from both biblical and extrabiblical sources to
illuminate ancient Israel and its neighbors without privileging the
biblical perspective. Biblical History and Israel’s Past provides a
comprehensive survey of how study of the Old Testament and the history
of Israel has changed since the middle of the twentieth century. Moore
and Kelle discuss significant trends in scholarship, trace the
development of ideas since the 1970s, and summarize major scholars,
viewpoints, issues, and developments. Review
by Bob Becking, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands, RBL,
published 2/6/2012.

It has long been recognized that the Persian period
is crucial to the history of the formation of the biblical corpora. The
essays presented in this volume explore this critically important era,
reconstructing the socio-economic shifts that took place as well as the
religio-theological environment of the Judean community and its
neighbours. The topics of this volume, sociological, archaeological and
theological, include: ethnicities and administration in Persian-era
Palestine (Yigal); the historical origin of the concept of the piety of
the poor at Qumran (Ro); the development of the theological concept of
Yhwh's punitive justice (Ro); social, cultural and demographic
transformations in Persian-period Judah (Faust); changes in Judah and
its neighbouring provinces in the fourth century BCE (Fantalkin and
Tal); some Greek views of the Persian empire (Sano). The papers
collected in this volume were presented at an international conference
held at International Christian University (ICU) in Tokyo, February
17-19, 2011, a testimony to the fruitfulness of this unusual
Asian-Israeli scholarly dialogue.

This book represents the fruit of a long process of study and
reflection, a powerful but subtle synthesis, by one of the most eminent scholars
of Second-Temple Judaism. Far from a conventional narrative history, it is
organized around themes and seeks to uncover the essence of Hebraic/Jewish
religious thinking while confronting the phenomenon of its division into several
'parties' and traditions. Drawing also on recent studies of Christianity as a 'Judaism',
Sacchi provides a stimulating perspective on the nature of ancient Oriental and
Occidental thought and the intellectual and spiritual heritage of European
civilization.

The proceedings of an international
conference of historians, archaeologists and biblical scholars, who met
in Amman to discuss new perspectives on the history of ancient
Jerusalem and its relationship to biblical tradition on October 12-14,
2001.
Contributors include: Thomas L Thompson, Michael Prior, Niels Peter
Lemche, Margreet
Steiner, Sara Mandell, John Strange, Lester Grabbe, Philip Davies,
Thomas M
Bolin, Ingrid Hjelm, David Gunn, and Keith Whitelam.

In
recent years the study of the history of Ancient Israel has become very
heated. On the one hand there are those who continue to use the Bible
as a primary source, modified and illustrated by the findings of
archaeology, and on the other there are some who believe that primacy
should be given to archaeology and that the Biblical account is then
seen to be for the most part completely unreliable in historical terms.
This volume makes a fresh contribution to this debate by inquiring into
the appropriate methods for combining different sorts of
evidence-archaeological, epigraphical, iconographical, as well as
Biblical. It also seeks to learn from related historical disciplines
such as classical antiquity and early Islamic history, where similar
problems are faced. The volume features contribution from a strong team
of internationally distinguished scholars, frequently in debate with
each other, in order to ensure that there is a balance of opinion.
Chapters focus on the ninth century BCE (the period of the Omri
dynasty) as a test case, but the proposals are of far wider application.Leia mais aqui. Review by Walter
Dietrich, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland, RBL, published
5/16/2009.